VDAFS ASCII File Parser (VAFP) Subsystem

The VAFP subsystem is responsible for parsing ASCII VDAFS data files into the internal working form. The parser performs numerous error checks for both syntactical and semantical errors while reading the file.

The VAFP subsystem has one main interface routine, vafp_ParseFile. This routine takes the name of a VDAFS file and a destination model as its arguments. The destination model must be allocated before the call to vafp_ParseFile. The parser can optionally invoke an application defined routine after each entity has been parsed (but before it is written to the database). The function is most commonly used to add the entity to a linked list based on its type or some other attribute. Modifications can be made to the entity as long as they do not invalidate it. Any changes made to the entity will be written to the database. Normally the parser is invoked by calling mda_ParseFile with any options to be passed to vafp_ParseFile (the routine vdaf_InitModelInfo configures the model so that vafp_ParseFile is invoked).